Loss and Love in Middle Age

Don't these songs really mesh from the end of a long relation to another that couldn't quite be.  It really hits you.

Mythbusters 4-20-2011

This episode featured attempting to run on water, what can shield you from a blast.

The A myth (Jamie and Adam’s) was running on water.  All attempts to do this failed, not surprisingly, though the YouTube video was replicated (its faked).

The idea was if one could run on water, at least for a few steps.  Even an Olympic athlete couldn’t do this, though a small lizard and many insects can.  Greater weight makes its impossible.

I did wonder if approached the water more like a long jumper possible you could manage to push of the water.  I doubt it, but I wonder.

It turns out that crouching behind a car or wall does offer quite a bit of protection from a blast.  This is a phenomenon on fluid dynamics.  The one thing I would have like to have seen tested was if being in the car is more protection than being behind it.  I’m pretty sure the answer would be yes if the windows were rolled up and absorbed even more of the pressure wave.

The first Cletus on the Simpons!!

The Incredible Incredibles

The Incredibles is one of my favorite movies.  Perhaps the most adult of any Pixar picture.  There are many scenes in the movie to show this, but I’ll pick one for now.  Bob Parr and his boss.

Bob is frustrated in job, as I think most people are at times.  Not that  time at work is always or usually bad for people, but occasionally it is, more in some jobs than others.

The best illustration.  Bob in his boss’ office, where Bob’s boss has been delivering a lecture to Bob about working for the shareholders, not customers.  Apparently Bob has heard this before.  Bob is distracted by a mugging happening right outside the window, and he starts to leave to do something about it.   This ensues: 

For an employee the understanding is always there than you work (and provide for your family) at your boss’ pleasure, and the boss calls the tune.  Here that pops into the open in a stark and humiliating way (especially for a superhero!!).

Most bosses don’t assert this in such a blunt way fortunately.  But anyone who works could feel for Bob, and feel what Bob’s feeling.

Bob’s reaction has to be the fantasy of any frustrated subordinate:

Any or at least most adults could identify with this.  That’s why it is incredible.

Drinking and Business

I drink rarely.  Early in career in the utility industry, I used to worry that might be an issue.  This skit would have been a worst case.  The reality is that drinking at work seems to have disappeared since the days of Mad Men.

Reality TV Question on the SAT

Maybe a more challenging essay topic could have been chosen, but I think a smart kid should be able to say something insightful with broader implications than saying:  "I really hate Billy on survivor"  (I know there's no Billy.  I've never watched Survivor or more than 5 or 10 episodes of reality TV, unless you count Mythbusters)
My own take on reality shows is that they reflect a movement in entertainment, especially TV away from what I think of as aspiration oriented to reality oriented, and that's been at least in part unfortunate.
Forty years ago TV reflected the kind of people we wanted to be.  Hardly any dad is as wise as Robert Young on father knows best.  But we all wanted to be, and what we aspired to reflected itself on TV.  Since the 70's shows seem much focused on being real or believable.  Characters became much more flawed.  Maybe we see more what we don't want to be now.  I suppose that has value as well, but I miss aspirational TV.

How to deal with Charley Sheen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuC7EsepJZ4

New Ideas

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Waiting for Spring

Sports Find

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704709304576124373773290508.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop

Fearless

I watched this for the second time I think tonight.  I really like this film.  I think it leads you to great insights about life.  Maybe the main one is we mostly let our lives be ruined by fear.

The first few minutes are fantastic.  Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) leads a handful of survivors away from a horrific crash of an airliner in a corn field.  He then leaves to find a hotel room forgoing any opportunity to be ministered to by first responders, interviewed by reporters, or consult with an attorney.

Instead he rents a car drives from the crash near Bakersfield to Los Angeles planning to visit an old girl friend, listening to the radio cranked up, feeling the wind in face with his head out the car window, pausing to to just sit by the car drink in a stunning purple desert landscape. 

Knowing now more than ever that life with all its pain and suffering is at least punctuated with moments of intense maybe even painful beauty, he lets it be.

Listening to the former lover, he takes in her story that her life is a “disaster”:  disappointing children, a husband denied promotion who sleeps with a student.  Knowing more than ever what a real disaster is, he knows and tells her and I think most us of that:  our lives are not disasters.

Finally, a representative of the airline catches up with him and offers him train travel back to his home in San Francisco.  Fearing liability and to speak the truth,She euphemistically speaks of the “emergency landing”.   Not fearing speaking directly and truthfully, he directly corrects her to speak as he does, of the crash.

Having faced death and having felt able to accept its apparent imminence, the liberated Max asks to fly back to San Francisco, and does.  He teeters between a sense invulnerability and indifference toward death.

Having faced death and having felt able to accept its apparent imminence, he is unshackled in many ways from the conventions most of live by:  fear of offending by speaking too directly; fear of drinking in the experience of the moment because what may be around the corner; fear of what people may think when maybe it doesn’t matter what they think; finally fearing to recognize that everything is our choice – living is choice we don’t have to make and whining we “have” to do this or that is mostly a cop out.

Most of the rest of the film deals with his difficult path to reconcile these revelations to the life he had when left on the flight.  His honesty often becomes cruel.  His acceptance of his mortality becomes recklessness.  Having learned so much, he forgets one crucial fact.  Much of the meaning of life is in your few deepest relationships, and cruelty and recklessness endangers his marriage and family.  Alienated from his family, he bonds with a fellow crash survivor, who he guides to acceptance of death of a child in the crash.

So what do I take away from all this?  Don’t confuse inconvenience with disaster.  Don’t miss the joy from the ability to live in the moment.  Any moment could be your last.  Don’t confuse making a choice to avoid bad consequences with “having” to do anything.  Don’t be afraid to tell the truth, but don’t be cruel.

You’re Missing

There was a death in my sister’s family and more distantly in mine.

I wanted to spend a moment describing how death of a loved one has always felt to me.  I’m not sure this is comforting, but maybe it allows for sharing of experience, and letting those left behind know they’re not alone.
The best art that gets at it for me has always been a Springsteen tune from The Rising.  It was mostly in the context of 9/11 and as such was unique, but I think it still applies.

Deaths that I’ve experienced all made me feel sort of disjointed.  For most of the world life goes on as if nothing has happened.  People express their sympathy and mean it, but still for them this is one very small thing competing for their attention and is not at the forefront of their attention.  Usually for them they didn’t know the person lost, or at least not as well as you did; For them for the most part nothing has happened.
For the bereaved, your life is upside down and the loss is on your mind most of the time.  Nothing feels normal, but again for most of those around you everything is normal.  You feel isolated and alienated from most people, at least more than usual.

I thought Springsteen captured this here with detailing of normal things:  papers on the porch, shirts in the laundry, etc; contrasted to the refrain of You’re missing.  Actually 9/11 was different from the typical death in that the sense of loss was I think more shared than normally is the case.

My sympathy to anyone feeling like this.  You aren't as alone as it feels.

Welcome

I love movies.  I watch many as videos.  I hope to comment and get to talk about them here.